Ferdinand Porsche - Electric Automobile

He was a true pioneer of electric mobility: more than 120 years ago, Ferdinand Porsche invented a wheel hub motor designed to power an electric car.

In 1899, Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) teamed up with Ludwig Loner, the manager of Lohner-Werke factory in Vienna, to develop an electric car they called "System Lohner-Porsche". Its front wheels were driven by wheel hub motors with an output of around 3 PS each, the range was about 50 kilometres.

At the 1900 Paris Exhibition, the vehicle was presented as the "world’s first transmissionless car" and attracted a lot of attention. To increase the range of the electric vehicle, which was very heavy due to its lead batteries, Porsche constructed the first hybrid automobile, the "Semper Vivus", with additional gasoline engines supplying more energy to the batteries and wheel hub motors.

However, the new technology did not catch on at the time.